Mortal Kombat outsold Street Fighter in the US???...

[NPham2005]

Did Mortal Kombat outsell Street Fighter in the US during the fighting game boom of the 1990s? Because according to this chart, the best-selling home version of a fighting game from the '90s was Mortal Kombat II (specifically the Sega Genesis version): http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-USPlatinum.shtml

[turboexpress]

If it did, then its really amazing and very hard to believe. Isn't SFII for snes the highest selling arcade to console fighting game ever?

[CastlevaniaDude]

Did Mortal Kombat outsell Street Fighter in the US during the fighting game boom of the 1990s? Because according to this chart, the best-selling home version of a fighting game from the '90s was Mortal Kombat II (specifically the Sega Genesis version): http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-USPlatinum.shtml

Although anecdotal evidence is of dubious value at best, my personal experience was that everybody had Mortal Kombat and nobody cared about Street Fighter 2. Why?

Because blood.

[jperryss]

Although anecdotal evidence is of dubious value at best, my personal experience was that everybody had Mortal Kombat and nobody cared about Street Fighter 2. Why?

Because blood.

This. The publicity the first (and even the second) games received due to the violence had everyone talking about it and most certainly drove sales.

I don't know anyone that pre-ordered SFII.

[celerystalker]

I knew Mortal Kombat was a big deal, because the cabinets always drew a crowd, but Mortal Kombat was never big with the people I knew. It was always about Street Fighter vs Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown, and we all usually laughed at Mortal Kombat's stiff animation and weak gameplay. It'd be a surprise to me to hear that MKII was the best seller, as so many more people I knew laughed at it, but it's not unfathomable to me, given how many kids I saw at those cabinets. It'd be interesting to compare SNES fans vs Genesis fans in franchise preference, as the SNES kids I knew were mostly Street Fighter guys, whereas the Genesis guys seemed to be either MK or the few crazy Eternal Champions guys who probably needed medication...

[homerhomer]

My guess is that it's probably because of release dates and Mortal Monday. It looks like SF2 SCE was released after Mortal Monday ( a HUGE commercial push for MK ) and after two SF2 games on the SNES. This had to make a difference. So by the time it was released on the Genesis, you have already been playing it for a year at your friend's house with a SNES. Plus you spent all your money on Mortal Monday two weeks prior to the release.


Super Nintendo
SF2 July 1992
SF2 Augest 1993
MK Sep 13, 1993

Genesis
MK Sep 13, 1993
SF2 SCE Sep 27, 1993

[Tanooki]

SF2 in the day sold itself on word of mouth and the marketing junk with the cartoon and that terrible(so bad it is good) movie.

MK though, that shit had MORTAL MONDAY! Which was hyped to hell and back with magazines, tv spots, store displays with Goro and the yin/yang logo and so on. It wouldn't surprise me in that era if it did sell more, and I remember hearing it did, and I said it then and I still think it 20 years later -- stupid people bought it for the blood, not the game play. Violence sold it, and moron politicians making a mockery of our freedoms and rights trying to ban that game helped sell it even further.


That said I owned both of them, and currently I don't. MK1 aged like a bad turd, SF2 stands up as nice as it ever did. I feel MK peaked early on with the sequel (MK2) and after that it went downhill from there when they made it more about run buttons, bitchslapping random attack buttons, turning up the speed, and just getting stupid with overkill ways to murder someone after the second loss. At least Capcom as often as they beat those SF2 spinoffs to death tried to at least do something a little different that worked and kept the strategy to it.

[SparTonberry]

Really? I heard that Mortal Kombat II outsold on the SNES over the Genesis, when Nintendo responded to the outcry over the first game by giving the censors a rest.
(although strangely I hear it was still censored in Japan, where neither version of MK3 was released either)

As to not many people preordering SFII. Preordering itself wasn't common practice then, I don't think. Maybe game stores like EB allowed it but I never heard them once ask. (although it might have been because I was a kid then so of course my parents had to actually buy the games. When I did get games as a kid, I probably got most of them from Target or Best Buy, neither I think even advertised preordering until the 2000s)

[Emperor Megas]

Wasn't Street Fighter II also like $80 bucks U.S. or something versus MK which was $60?

[Dashopepper]

I do not find this surprising at all. Mortal Kombat always seemed a lot more popular game. And from my experience with Flea markets and thrift stores there is always bound to be a Mortal Kombat game in the bunch. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if streetfighter sold half of what Mortal Kombat did.

[SparTonberry]

That or people just don't want MK. :D

I hear SF2 (not sure if combined for all versions or not) for SFC sold like 4 million in Japan. Yet its popularity there has supposedly SIGNIFICANTLY dropped since its prime days. I wonder if that's why it seems to common to find SFC carts sold in bulk? :P

[Emperor Megas]

That or people just don't want MK. :DThat was my first thought! :D

[Tanooki]

Wasn't Street Fighter II also like $80 bucks U.S. or something versus MK which was $60?

SF2 when it arrived in southern california was $65 at retail, the rare amount of times countable on one hands worth of fingers I angrily paid the fan tax. MK1, don't hold me to it, but I don't remember it being over the usual $50 price point. It hadn't quite had the fan base behind it that SF2 already had, so that's why they did the rare and unusual pre-order racket combined with Mortal Monday. To help sell the crap out of that game they gave out free boxes of bribes(toys) to people which had a MK button, a full set of trading cards of all the characters, and there was some other junk too. They made you want to buy it through freebies and hype.

[Emperor Megas]

I remember purchasing MKII for a friend for his birthday. Actually we both got each other MKII for our birthdays which were close to each other. He got it for me for the SNES and I got him MKII for the Genesis, and I remember the SNES version being $10 more, so I sort of made out better; at least from a price point. We bought both from Electronics Boutique, and I remember the Genesis version being $50 and the SNES being $60, but old age may be warping my memory.

[turboexpress]

SF2 stands up as nice as it ever did.

amen!

[Kwyjibo]

I personally played a lot more MK2 than SFII. Not really by choice, but because my friend liked the fatalities, and it was his system.

[Greg2600]

Midway's promotional budget dwarfed Capcom's. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if MK outsold SF. MK also had a fairly successful film whereas SF's was a huge bomb.

[Tanooki]

True enough about that. That MK movie was surprisingly really good and it even held the #1 spot for at least two weeks in US theaters too. Shame the sequels were steamy turds, but it did prove for once a game can go movie and not blow, and be good enough to even get non-game people to like it enough to see it a bit. Tomb Raider only repeated it sometime after with its two movies.

Oh and damn you for reminding me, I can hear that MORTAL KOMBAT yell in my head now followed by that tune for the movie.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA